Local author rides sci-fi ‘Elevator’

In San Diegan Jason Hough’s debut sci-fi novel, “The Darwin Elevator,” a plague has decimated the planet, turning most of Earth’s inhabitants into zombie-like savages. The uninfected huddle around a mysterious alien-built tower in Australia that shields them from the disease.

Or so it seems.

After the book came out in late July, it got a glowing review on NPR and became a New York Times best-seller. But Hough has had little time to enjoy all that. His sequel, “The Exodus Towers,” was released in August, and the third book in the series, “The Plague Forge,” launches Tuesday.

Hough will be at Mysterious Galaxy Monday at 7 p.m.

Q: I understand this series stems from you seeing Star Wars when you were 6. What do you remember about that experience?

A: I remember not understanding a lot of it. I very distinctly remember in the opening scenes when Darth Vader is trying to interrogate one of the rebels to find out where the princess is and he chokes the guy. There’s this horrible sound as the guy’s windpipe is being crushed or something. It’s stuck with me ever since. I guess you could say that was a little bit of a wake-up call to a 6 year old that everything wasn’t just horses and fun stuff.

Q: Is your character Skyler Luiken a nod to Luke Skywalker?

A: It’s funny, I didn’t actually intend it that way, which a lot of people find hard to believe. I originally named him Wiek (pronounced weak), which is a friend of mine’s name. Later on, as I was writing the first draft, I realized that to have your main character, your hero, named Wiek — that at least some of the other characters should be making fun of that, or cracking jokes about it now and then, which I thought would kind of detract from things. So I changed it to another Dutch name, Skyler, and it was only later that I realized the name was sort of a reverse of Luke Skywalker.

Q: As it turns out, Skyler is a little weak. Why did you make him that way?

A: I had taken a class on storytelling and one of the things the instructor kept hammering home was your hero needs a weakness. In order to have a character arc, they need to grow in some way. I thought it would be interesting to have Skyler be a bad leader. He falls into the job because the other guy left. He’s never done it before, doesn’t really know how to do it. I think at the same time, in my own career at a local company, I had been flirting with being put in a leadership position and it kind of terrified me to spend time telling others what to do instead of just doing my own work. I thought it would be interesting to explore that through his character and then have him grow into being a good leader toward the end.

Q: You used to design video games. How did that help you as a writer?

A: My job was to write a very lengthy document that would detail every aspect of a game: the rules, the characters that were in it, the worlds they were exploring, everything down to the nitty-gritty with the idea being that you could hand it off to your team of programmers and artists so they could go off and create that game. It was a lot of planning — essentially it was all the type of planning that I needed to do in order to write a novel.

Q: Are you someone then who needs to outline extensively before you sit down to write?

A: I’ve backtracked on that a bit. The first book in this series I outlined very extensively and one of the things I realized is that although that was very useful to me, it was actually so detailed it took a lot of the creative spontaneity out of the writing process. Now I kind of limit myself in the chapter outlines to one sentence instead of whole paragraphs.

Q: Your books are kind of a nod to earlier science fiction books that came out first in paperback. Was that intentional?

A: The interesting thing is, that wasn’t part of the original plan. All of the publishers I talked to originally were talking about hardback release with roughly a year between each book, a very traditional schedule. It was only after I turned in the first draft of book two and I was ahead of schedule, that’s when they approached me about doing a more rapid release cycle and doing it straight to paperback. I was initially against it for purely selfish reasons — I just wanted to hold my hardback book in my hands. But it’s worked out well so far.

Q: The infected humans in your story are zombie-like. Are you a zombie fan?

A: A little bit, I guess. I think I’m growing more tired of it. I wanted to make them not be undead, like zombies are. They’re still very much living creatures. Most of the part of their brain that lets them moderate every thought that goes through their head is gone, and they are acting very much on primal instinct. I wanted it to be very dangerous to leave the city of Darwin in the story, but at the same time I didn’t want it to be aliens that were waiting out there. I liked the idea that we were going to have to go out and fight our own race, essentially.

Q; Why did you set the book in Darwin?

A: Completely shallow reasons. In order for a space elevator to work from a physics standpoint it needs to be near the equator. I was just spinning the globe around one day looking for an interesting place to set it and as soon as I saw Darwin I just knew. I thought it was perfect because of the double connotation you get. And the more I looked into it, the more I liked it. It’s an interesting place in an interesting part of the world.

Q: I see in your author bio that you have two sons (one is almost 4, the other almost 2). Are they going to see Star Wars when they’re 6?

A: It’s funny because you always hear people say that kids are growing up faster these days. I came home from work one day and my older son was playing the Star Wars version of Angry Birds on the iPad and was asking me all these questions about Darth Vader. And I was like, “No, I don’t want this to be your first exposure to Star Wars!” But he was already so into it I couldn’t say anything. So maybe we’ll get to it when he’s 5.